CARE AI

News: Upcoming Travels

At Ubicomp/ISWC 2025 in Finland (Oct 12–16, 2025), Dr. Bae is co-organizing two international workshops on Mental Health: From Research to Practice in Mental Healthcare and XAI For U, with outstanding scholars worldwide, with the websites now live, and on Oct 17, 2025, she will also participate in the annual IMWUT Editorial Board meeting.
Congratulations to Melik Ozolcer for receiving the IEEE BHI 2025 NSF-EMBS-Google Sponsored Young Professional NextGen Scholar Recognition. He will present his work, “SePA: A Search-Enhanced Predictive Agent for Personalized Health Coaching”, at the IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI 2025) in Atlanta, Georgia, October 26–29, 2025.

Media Coverage

Our research has received widespread recognition and has been featured across prominent medical news sites, science and technology media outlets, and nonprofit platforms. In this work, we developed open-source affective mobile sensing systems to detect depression through subtle facial and pupil signals. This highlights the collaborative potential of medical experts, scientists, and engineers in addressing critical public health challenges.
News-Medical Life Sciences. Smartphone-based AI systems track subtle facial, pupil signals to identify depression September 30, 2024
Neuroscience News. AI Detects Depression Through Eyes and Facial Cues September 30, 2024
Medical Xpress. AI-powered apps show potential for detecting depression through eye snapshots September 30, 2024
Science Daily. When detecting depression, the eyes have it September 30, 2024
StudyFinds.org. Sad eyes are real — Apps may soon recognize depression in your face, October 2, 2024
SciTechDaily. Could Smiling Signal Depression? AI Shows Surprising Findings October 9, 2024
WIRED. Depression can be detected simply by looking at a smartphone; new technology reveals its hidden potential. October 22, 2024
The Good Men Project, Dr. Sang Won Bae on Detecting Depression With Apps November 18, 2024
Our collaborative study, "An Exploratory Study on the Impacts of Voice-Based Conversational Agents with Proactive Interactions in the Driving Context", was published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction on January 10, 2025, and was featured in Research & Innovation on February 19, 2025

Research Talks, Panels & Seminars

Melik’s paper, “SePA: A Search-Enhanced Predictive Agent for Personalized Health Coaching,” has been accepted for presentation at the 2025 IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI), to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, from October 26–29, 2025.
Melik presented a talk titled "Personalized Neural Modeling for Daily Injury Risk Assessment via Wearable Health Data" at the IEEE/ACM CHASE 2025 Conference, held June 24-26, 2025.
Tongze's first-author paper on AXAI-CDSS, based on our NIH-funded research, received the Excellent Paper Award🏅. Melik's paper on Volleyball Performance Prediction was nominated for Best Paper, and our CARE AI Lab organized the Mental Health Data Challenge at the 2025 International Conference on Activity and Behavior Computing, held April 21-25, 2025.
Dr. Bae was invited to give a talk titled "Empowering Real-Time Interventions: AI-Driven Detection of Substance Intoxication Through Mobile Sensors" at Department of Biomedical Informatics, School of Medicine, Emory University on February 18, 2025.
Dr. Bae is co-organizing the XAI FOR U and Mental Health workshops and serving as Web Chair at UbiComp 2025.
Dr. Bae accepted the invitation to extend her role as an Associate Editor for IMWUT through 2027 on January 9, 2025, continuing her valuable contribution to the journal.
Dr. Bae was invited to serve a Program Committee member for the 7th International Conference on Activity and Behavior Computing 2025.
Our NIH-funded cannabis research was introduced by Judge Deb Wigington at the 2024 Criminal Justice Conference, held at the Doubletree by Hilton Austin North, February 22-23, 2024.
Dr. Bae was invited to serve as a reviewer for the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) on December 19, 2024.
Rahul presented a talk titled "MoodCam: Mood Prediction Through Smartphone-Based Facial Affect Analysis in Real-World Settings" at the 21 st IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, December 2-7, 2024.
Dr. Bae was invited to join a panel at BioNJ AI & Digital Health Day, titled "How AI is Accelerating the Path from Approval to Better Patient Outcomes", held at Stevens Institute of Technology, November 18, 2024.
Dr. Bae was invited to give a seminar titled "Towards Responsible Digital Therapeutics for Health Risk Prevention" at Rice University on November 14, 2024.
Tongze presented his poster titled "Explainable and Emotionally Intelligent AI-Based Clinical Decision Support with LLMs" at the 2024 IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics, Houston, USA, November 10-13, 2024.
Dr. Bae was invited to deliver a lab presentation at the Workshop on the Future of Ubiquitous Computing and Human-Centred AI at UNSW Sydney, Australia, on October 11, 2024.
Dr. Bae was invited to present our recent work in the Public Reporting and Education Committee (PEEC) Meeting of the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission, on August 23, 2024.

Research Talks & Awards

Congratulations are in order!

Rahul's FacePsy paper, which focuses on our open-source framework for depression detection, has been published for MobileHCI 2024.
Tongze's paper on algorithmic explainability has been selected as one of the six 🏅Best Paper Candidates at the 2024 Activity and Behavior Computing conference.
Melik successfully presented his paper, titled "Towards Enhancing User Experience and Adoption of AI Chatbot Apps for Mental Health" at the 21st International Conference on Systems Engineering Research, held in Tucson, Arizona, from March 25-27, 2024.
In parallel, Tongze's collaboration with Rutgers and the University of Washington on "Exploring Algorithmic Explainability: Generating Explainable AI Insights for Personalized Clinical Decision Support Focused on Cannabis Intoxication in Young Adults", and Rahul's work, "PupilSense: Detection of Depressive Episodes Through Pupillary Response in the Wild", have been accepted at the 2024 Activity and Behavior Computing conference, co-sponsored by IEEE 2024, in Kyushu, Japan from May 28-31, 2024.
Rahul, Tongze, and Melik have been selected as the recipients of the School of Systems and Enterprises' 2024 Award for Academic Achievement in the Doctoral Program, Best Student Paper Award, and Fabrycky-Blanchard Award, respectively. Congratulations on these outstanding achievements 🎉🏆🏆🏆!🎉
These achievements not only highlight their dedication but also mark significant contributions to the fields of AI, HCI, and Health Systems Engineering.

Academic Service, Invited Talks & Collaborative Research

In collaboration with KAIST and KNU, our paper titled "S-ADL: Exploring Smartphone-based Activities of Daily Living to Detect Blood Alcohol Concentration in a Controlled Environment" has been recognized with 🏆a Best Paper Honorable Mention, placing it in the top 5% of accepted papers. We presented it at CHI '24 in Hawaiʻi, held from May 11-16, 2024.
Dr. Bae will serve as the Associate Chair of the Program Committee for both CHI 2025 and CSCW 2025, and she has been appointed as the Web Chair of the Organizing Committee for Ubicomp 2025.
Dr. Bae has been appointed as the Program Vice-Chair for the 21st IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing 2024. In addition, she will be serving on the PC for Brain Informatics 2024.

Recently, Dr. Bae served as the AC and the Health and AI Session Chair at the ACM CHI 2024 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Dr. Bae gave her invited talk on "Digital Phenotyping of Substance Use Behaviors for Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions" at the Big Data Conference 2024, January 25-26, and on "Multidisciplinary Approach to Better Understand Addictive Behavior" at the HCI@KAIST Seminar, January 8, 2024.
Our collaborative project with Drs. Liu, Chen, and Oyeleke, titled "Closed Loop Brain State Monitoring and Control for Cognitive Capability and Mental Disorders Improvement Based on EEG-tDCS Platform," was honored with the SSE Dean’s Research Incentive Award FY24 🏆 on January 2, 2024

Award

We are delighted to announce that our 🏆NIH U01 grant proposal, in collaboration with Rutgers and the University of Washington, totaling $762,552 with a Site PI allocation of $305,452, has been accepted for the project titled "Monitoring Acute and Longer-term Effects of Cannabis on Psychomotor Performance in Daily Life in Medical Cannabis Patients." The project is scheduled to run from August 15, 2023, to June 30, 2028.

Media Coverage

New Scientist featured an article titled "AI can detect if you have recently smoked cannabis" showcasing Dr. Bae's study on October 6, 2023

Academic Service

Dr. Bae received Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews in the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT) 2023 and served as the Session Chair for AI for Health at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2023.
From 2023 to 2025, Dr. Bae also holds the positions of Associate Editor for IMWUT and Associate Chair for CHI.

Symposium Talk

Dr. Bae and Rahul presented "Revolutionizing Mental Health Support: An Innovative Affective Mobile Framework for Dynamic, Proactive, and Context-Adaptive Conversational Agents" at the Generative AI for Pervasive Computing Symposium (GenAI4PC), hosted by Google, on October 9, 2023.

Commercialization Program

Dr. Bae was invited as an inaugural member of the Innovations For Substance Use Disorders (I4SUD) Programs & Pitch Competition at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, scheduled for October 16-20, 2023.

Symposium Talk

Rahul's paper titled "MicroFlow", along with the collaborative paper by Melik, Rahul and Tongze with Dr. Liao on "Empathetic and Trustworthy AI Chatbots" were accepted for poster and oral presentations at the 9th International Engineering Systems Symposium (CESUN), which took place on November 6-7, 2023, in Evanston, Illinois.

Award

Our proposal for the 🏆NIH R21 grant, totaling$264,594—with a Site PI allocation of $120,916—in collaboration with Rutgers and the University of Washington, was accepted on September 7, 2022. The project is titled "Smartphone Sensors to Detect Shifts Toward Healthy Behavior During Alcohol Treatment."

Panel Discussion

Dr. Bae presented a talk at the Research Society on Alcoholism during a panel discussion titled "Personalizing Digital Alcohol Interventions to Optimize Effectiveness" in June 2022.

Workshop Talk

Sophia's workshop paper, titled "Exploring Students' Flow States Using Facial Behavior Markers in an Online At-Home Learning Environment", was accepted for presentation at the CHI 2022 workshop on the Future of Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction.

Invited Talk

Dr. Bae gave a talk in the Seminar Series at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) on May 20, 2022, titled “The Future of Mobile Healthcare Systems”.

Media Coverage

Forbes introduced Dr. Bae's study under the title "Your Smartphone Can Tell If You’re High On Marijuana, Study Finds" on September 27, 2021.

Award

Accepted the proposal for the SSE Dean’s Research Incentive Award 🏆, receiving $39,944 for the project titled "Smart & Connected Spaces: A Testbed for IoT Data Innovation in SSE " on April 12, 2022.

Stevens Media

Dr. Bae's study was featured by Stevens Media under the title "Smartphone Sensors Are Capable of Detecting Cannabis High and Have the Potential to Provide Early Intervention" on September 29, 2021.

Research & Innovation News

Dr. Bae's study was featured by Stevens Media under "This AI Predicts Binge-Drinking from Smartphone Data" on July 14, 2020.

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